Emirates Group creates digital, accessible workplace for employees

Using technology to improve its processes is not new to Emirates Group. The group includes the largest airline and flag carrier of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and one of the world’s largest air services providers, dnata. Having Microsoft as a trusted partner for years, Emirates decided to take the next step in their digitalization journey and focus on productivity, collaboration and communication capabilities for its employees. It used Microsoft 365, the Power Platform, and Azure and established a powerful and productive digital workplace.

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Emirates’ digital journey to the cloud began in 2012, when cabin crew members were equipped with cloud-based email and, later on, a portal to access apps and work-related information. The portal was accessible anytime, anywhere, on office equipment or personal devices, whether in a crew hotel abroad or at home in Dubai.

Providing seamless and easy access to corporate information for everyone in the Group, as well as enhancing collaboration and productivity capabilities, were strategic priorities for the management team of Emirates. The Group’s businesses are fully operational 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with a great number of employees constantly on the move. Add in employees working from the office—or from home due to the pandemic—and we have a business that requires utmost reliability and flexibility from their tools to allow its people to work effectively.

“In organizations where thousands of people work with multiple solutions, it is crucial to provide flexible, seamless and secure employee access, as well as online tools that facilitate collaboration,” shares Thomas Heuckeroth, DVP CyberSecurity, Group CISO at Emirates Group. Equally important is the ability to swiftly build and provide solutions for the ever-changing business requirements.

“In organizations where thousands of people work with multiple solutions, it is essential to provide flexible, seamless and secure employee access, as well as online tools that facilitate collaboration.”

Thomas Heuckeroth, DVP CyberSecurity, Group CISO, Emirates Group

A digital renaissance in action

The Emirates Group decided to rely on Microsoft Cloud—Microsoft 365, Azure and Power Platform—as the foundation for their digital working environment. At the heart of this environment is the Digital Workplace concept that brings various tools and processes under a common umbrella without compromising flexibility or security.

For Emirates Group, the Digital Workplace is not a solution that is deployed and revisited intermittently. It is a continuously evolving concept with solutions, processes, adoption programs, and specifically trained employees across different locations and business units, acting as champions. The living nature of the Digital Workplace ensures the benefits are quickly realized, and the changing business requirements known.

“We're constantly exploring and trialing new features that we can then adopt and roll out,” shares Andre Wyss, Head of Digital Workplace at ‎Emirates Group. “Digitalization is a never-ending story. By creating a digital workplace, we have reduced the complexity of our landscape and drastically improved user access, security, and visibility.”

Employee experience, just like the customer experience, has always been the top priority for Emirates. Technical rollouts and the introduction of new tools and solutions always includes carefully planned adoption and change management activities with extensive communication and awareness campaigns. A special program was launched to upskill hundreds of Emirates Group employees across the different business units, having them act as Digital Workplace Champions. The role of a Champion is to understand business challenges and processes, and assist fellow employees to gain the most out of the tools. The program consists of multiple trainings and awareness sessions and culminates in a graduation celebrated by the top leadership.

Digital Workplace

What began as a communication and collaboration toolset has today become the heart of the digital working experience for Emirates Group employees. Microsoft Teams has proven its value especially during the remote working months, enabling meetings regardless of employees’ locations and allowing trainings to continue even when classrooms are closed.

The Digital Workplace has proven itself to be much more. It is a platform that has the flexibility to swiftly react to continuously changing business requirements. Microsoft Power Platform brings the benefits of low-code / no-code to the hands of the Digital Workplace team—and also directly to the business through citizen developers. Hundreds of Power Apps applications are developed and used today at Emirates Group.

“By creating a digital workplace, we reduced the complexity of our landscape and drastically improved user access, security, and visibility.”

Andre Wyss, Head of Digital Workplace, Emirates Group

As in all Emirates Group operations, security is a top priority in the digital space. Tools such as Microsoft Cloud Application Security and Azure AD Conditional Access silently ensure security, while others like Azure AD Multi-Factor Authentication with the Authenticator app have simplified the secure single sign-on access for all employees.

Resilience with best in-class tools

When the COVID-19 crisis hit Emirates Group in the March of 2020, a group-wide decision was made quickly for all group employees to continue working remotely. With the help of Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft 365 tools, they were able to continue business during lockdowns without interruption. The power and the flexibility of Emirates Group’s digital toolset went through a stress-test that no one had seen or imagined. The business continued over Teams meetings, Windows Virtual Desktops, and other solutions.

“Using Microsoft 365, Azure and Power Platform is like having a well-oiled machine on the cloud,” adds Ramesh Venkatakrishnan, Chief Enterprise Architect at Emirates. “We can reuse previous solutions or applications for new projects and even integrate them with other apps quickly. Apps like Power BI and Yammer in Teams brings everything together under one umbrella of Digital Workplace.”

A pivotal partnership

The strategic partnership of Emirates Group and Microsoft has lasted many years, nurtured by top executives of both companies. “Microsoft and Emirates Group have always collaborated closely to create win-win scenarios. We provide a wide variety of business use cases to test Microsoft products through unique scenarios of an expansive global network. It has always been about shaping products for aviation which is one of the most dynamic industries, in partnership with Microsoft,” says Wyss.

“Microsoft and The Emirates Group have a longstanding relationship which has enabled benefits for both organizations and so it is a win-win partnership. This has been achieved by recognizing and respecting each other’s standings as tech leaders, and aviation and travel leaders.”

Andre Wyss, Head of Digital Workplace, Emirates Group

Emirates Group is also no stranger to Microsoft’s private previews and Technology Adoption Programs. Many new innovations have been evaluated well ahead of their release, keeping Emirates Group at the leading edge on their digital toolbox as well as helping Microsoft to get valuable insights from a large multi-national organization

Flying high in the cloud

Microsoft Cloud allowed Emirates Group to create a solid digital workplace experience for its employees and opened doors for the next chapters of their digital journey. Emirates aims to fly better also in this transformation journey, with several ambitious initiatives in the making.

“Microsoft 365 and Azure technology were pivotal for building the modern, agile workplace environment we needed,” concludes Heuckeroth.